THE PARIS LETTER: Getting "Bonjoured"

Montmartre Stairs

France and America - we have such a long history together, both of fascination and irritation. We love each other but we hate each other. Its very complicated - like, goes back to the Revolutionary War complicated. 

Lots of Americans feel the French are rude -they come to Paris and they try to be nice, and the French won't give them the time of day. What gives? As you get a little more deeply into the culture here, you realize that many French people find AMERICANS rude - they come here in droves, crowding into subway cars shouting in English and bumping people with their fanny packs, demanding hamburgers at 4PM and wondering why things aren't open on Sunday. 

Clearly, this is a very complex issue, too complex to really handle in a blog post. But there's one word at the center of so much of this, and that word is: Bonjour.

Yes, Bonjour, the simplest French word, the first one you learn - Hello. 

Allow me to explain, after the jump:

THE PARIS LETTER: Fancy Parties and Rude Parisians

Hello All:

It is a gorgeous day in Paris today - Sunny, with bright blue clear skies, reminding us all that spring may actually be on it's way - and that Matt and I have been here for almost 6 months now -

UNESCO Globe and Eiffel Tower

This week was particularly event filled because a friend of Matt's parents, Jill Banfield, was North American winner of thethe L'Oreal Women in Science Award, and was in Paris all week to receive it. The Award is presented jointly by L'Oreal and UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which is based in Paris. This meant we went to not just one but TWO fancy events this week - a cocktail party at the US Ambassador's residence, and the Awards Ceremony at the UNESCO Headquarters. We met a bunch of young State Department employees at these events, which was pretty cool - a whole new contingent of Americans in Paris. In addition, for this week's funny story, I will tell you about my continuing attempts to defend myself in the big city using my limited French - with decidedly mixed results.

THE PARIS LETTER: French Rom Coms, Bitchy Yoga Teachers, and La Pharmacie

Hello from our sickbed - well, really Matt's now - where I write this letter in between checking for updates on the fall of the Egyptian government. Crazy stuff. I'm both excited and a little worried.

Matt and I have basically spent the week in bed sick - first me, now him - making it not the most exciting week. Thankfully I think we are both on the mend now. My cousin Hillary, who has lived here for 5 years, told me to expect to be sick more often this first year as the body adjusts to a new environment with new germs and whatnot - This seems to be true. We're going through our second bout of colds since we got here 4 months ago, which is a lot for us.

Getting sick in Paris means a trip to the Pharmacie, where all drugs are sold. While you can get shampoo, toothpaste, and kleenex at your local supermarket, you cannot get aspirin or cold medicine. For this, you must go to the pharmacie, an institution that will seem totally weird to many Americans, as they sell homeopathic and herbal remedies alongside more traditional medicines, often with makeup and skincare thrown in as well. The French are famous pill-takers and hypochondriacs, so there are multiple "Soins" (treatments) for everything; its very difficult to leave the pharmacie without some form of herbal remedy, usually given in conjunction with the more traditional medicine - why take one pill when you can take four? However, there are some things they don't have, weirdly- like Melatonin, which is illegal to sell here for some reason (I still don't get it). 

I went to the pharmacy when we first arrived to try and find some and was given an armload of herbal stress and sleep remedies instead that I bought because I didn't know how to politely say no in French at that point.



This week we are taking "Fervex", sort of like Theraflu - pour la Rhume et L'Etat Grippal (for a cold and "flu state") - seems to be doing the job. I'm having my neighbor pick up some Lemsip when she's in London next week, this British invention is truly the top cold remedy I've found.

This week I started my registration for coursework at the Sorbonne's Cours de Civilazation Francaise - a special course they have for foreigners to study French language and french civilization. Registering reminded me what a famous student city Paris is - I registered with people from all over, including very fashionable Saudi girls in Versace headscarves whose brothers registered for them while they talked on their cellphones, hip Japanese teens doing their year abroad in France, Dutch fashion models, and some requisite Americans who didn't understand why they had to wait in line or bring the right paperwork (They are American, after all, right?).

I have to go back next week to take my language placement, but then I will be taking a combination of language classes and seminars on French life, politics, and culture. I'm already very excited about my seminar choices, which include things like Introduction to French Political Life, Economy and Society in France and Europe, a whole course in French screenwriters and Directors, and one in 20th Century French Theater. There's also one in French Gastronomy, food and culture - but guys, I think it's only offered at a lower level of French than I'm at. Sorry everyone.

I also passed a major milestone for myself this week by going to both a French film AND a French play and understanding them both - I would say at about 80% understanding, enough so I wasn't lost at all about what was happening. I don't know if I can explain how liberating this was for me - there's so much happening here in terms of film and theater, and I haven't been able to fully experience it because I basically haven't been able to go to anything without subtitles for the past few months. Now, I feel like I can at least begin to experience culture same way thethe Parisians are, which is HUGE.

The French film was a good example of the differences between our two cultures. It was a romantic comedy that's been quite successful here, called LES NOMS DES GENS, or, basically, The Names of People/ People's Names. Its got a traditional set-up in that there's a sort of buttoned up older guy who meets a free-spirited young woman that he falls in love with, almost loses, and then finally is able to get together with. The free-spirited young woman, played by actress Sara Forestier, has a sort of Kirsten Dunst/Kate Hudson energy to her - thethe beautiful fun-loving girl that comes into your life and shakes it up. Except in this French movie she is naked almost all the time, in a way that wouldn't be true in the American version. At first this irritated me, as I'm not a fan of romcoms that seem to have a female lead that's more male fantasy than real person.

HOWEVER, then the French movie turned POLITICAL in a way that I loved but that would NEVER happen in an American film. You see, our two protagonists have very political French histories - our guys mother was Jewish, and her parents were sent to the camps during World War II, but not before placing her in an orphanage and changing her name so no one would know she was Jewish. This became a big family secret and they never, ever spoke of their Jewish past while the boy was growing up. Meanwhile, the girl is half-Algerian, the daughter of a father who was a refugee from the French Algerian war, and a wealthy French mother who turned to counterculture in the 70s and rejected her bourgeois past. So the girls family is very open and outspoken about politics.

The other part is that the girl has decided to sleep with political hardliners - both Islamic and French - to convert them to her more liberal point of view. This is not why she sleeps with guy in thethe film - she actually loves him - but is another part of her character. So you see, more sex and more politics in the French rom com than we would ever see in the US one. And it works! At least for me. Though I prudishly found some of the nudity a little annoying. But most people won't, and this chick has a great body.

One final funny story from the week and then I'm off - I will tell you about my yoga class with The Bitchiest Yoga Teacher Ever.
Have I mentioned that I'm taking yoga here? This is also a good way to learn new French words, as you basically have to relearn all the parts of the body, but if you've done some yoga before you can pretty much make all the necessary connections. For example - Les epaules = shoulders as in "relacher les epaules" (relax your shoulders), 'cheville" = Ankle as in "attraper la cheville" (grab your ankle), etc -

I've been taking with a GREAT teacher (recommended again by my cousin Hillary), who is very funny and generous and I've generally been happy taking her class - However, there's this very fancy yoga studio down by the Sorbonne called Rasa Yoga, that's supposed to be amazing, so I went to a class there after registering this week just to check it out. And it was a beautiful studio, all skylights and hardwood floors in an old Left Bank building that felt very "Catherine Deneuve does Yoga". I was excited at first. But then I took a class with this teacher - I KNEW it would be a problem when I introduced myself at the beginning of class and mentioned that I was American, and she fixed me with a cold stare and asked if I'd ever done Iyengar yoga before. Hmmmm....this was supposed to be a beginner class ...

The teacher, it turns out, was American but a very unhappy American who proceeded to treat the class like shit for an hour and a half, saying things in French like "I'm only going to demonstrate this once; if you don't watch, well then it's your practice, not mine"; and "How do you expect me to teach if you're not listening to me?"; and "No one is doing what I'm telling you to do" and ... I think she actually said something like " You guys are idiots for spending hte money on this class if you're not going to practice between classes". Then she would literally come over and kick you into position with her foot if you asked a question. So of course no one wanted to ask her ANYTHING, we just prayed we would get out without her focusing her disdain on us.

This was one of my better zen moments, I thought, because I had this very Claire Lundberg moment at the beginning where I was incensed and was going to storm out in protest - but then I thought...well, then I will have accomplished nothing except paying for a yoga class and not taking it - So I just decided to find this poor unhappy woman very funny rather than monstrous, and that helped me get through the class basically unscathed, physically or emotionally .... Ah Paris, apparently where unhappy American yoga teachers come to retire ....

Okay, I'm running long again, so I'll sign off now and wish everyone a good week - More to come next week as I continue my cultural adventures -

A bientot!

Claire